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The future and the balance of, Starcraft II

by wunder_

Hi! I'm here to talk to you invisible readers to bring you an important topic; balance. Current State of the Game As it stands, Starcraft II has been bogged down by a myriad of problems, ranging from Blizzard's and KeSPA's reluctance to negotiate, the region locks of the game, and also, the current 'imbalance'. There is a general consensus by most people that Starcraft II, is imbalanced. Most p...

Hi! I'm here to talk to you invisible readers to bring you an important topic; balance.
 

Current State of the Game

As it stands, Starcraft II has been bogged down by a myriad of problems, ranging from Blizzard's and KeSPA's reluctance to negotiate, the region locks of the game, and also, the current 'imbalance'. There is a general consensus by most people that Starcraft II, is imbalanced. Most people view the Terran race as the most overpowered race ever created by man and that every unit is a titan compared to the ant's that are the Zerg and Protoss. It may seem far fetched, but I've read uStream chat, there are some people that think like that. "No, there's no way that the Terran player outplayed the Zerg or Protoss, Terran is supaOP."
 
However, I believe that with all things, balance takes time. I do think some units need some tweaking, and the game is obviously not perfectly balanced, it took Starcraft and  Brood War a good 9 years after release to finally hit the 1.09 patch where balance changes stopped happening and the rest of the patches were simply exploit fixes for the Koreans who found new ways to get ahead. 9 years, and even then there have been arguments of balance even then, and by taking a glance at the OnGameNet Starleague (OSL) or MBCGame Starcraft League (MSL), one can see that Terran have won more medals than Protoss or Zerg. Does that mean Terran is OP? Does the Legend of the Fall attribute to the fact that Protoss players are only expected to win once in a while? No, of course not. So why is there such a huge uproar with Terrans in Starcraft II?
 
That's because I believe people in the current ladder are rushing to play this game, to try and become the best of the best, as this is essentially a clean slate. It allows foreigners to take advantage of this situation as much as possible and get on par with the Koreans before the skill gap becomes to huge. Due to Multi-building Selection (MBS), auto-mine, and a nigh infinite control group, the insane skill required to manage units in a tiny control group of 12, making sure you mine efficiently, and building from all your buildings at the same time is greatly reduced.

The Map Rotation and Size

This, I believe is the major factor in Starcraft II's current state. In Starcraft, it took a while before legendary maps such as Peaks of Baekdu, Fantasy, Byzantium, and Fighting Spirit to appear and that have been used to play the most insane matches ever seen in Starcraft history. The current pool of Blizzard created maps are extremely poor and don't support a very macro-oriented style of play. A lot of them are very small, and prone to very early aggression, but the defensive capabilities of Terran nullify a lot of those possibilities, creating a void in skill as a few siege tanks can equalize the skill between a Zerg player and a Terran, as the new smart targeting of the Siege Tank means that the Terran player wouldn't have to do anything special to deflect the attack of the Zerg. Nydus worms also seem nonexistant as many Zergs claim that they are too expensive and aren't efficient. Again, with such a small map and base, the Terran can defend their base very quickly and don't have to move back and forth often to defend against a Nydus popping in their main. 
 
Hopefully, with iCCup making maps and a lot of mapmakers converting old BW maps into SCII, we will see leagues and perhaps even ladder take up these popular maps and hopefully see more balanced matches as the macro style of play is, at the very least, raised to par with micro mechanics and disallow the other player to simply sit with a large tank line on 2 or 3 bases and defeat the other player. 
 

Player Mentality

I'm almost done, I promise! Finally, we reach the last point, which is the current state of the Player. There are probably a few types of SCII players, but I'd say the most common on forums right now, are the low-mid level diamond players. These 100-700~ point diamond players troll TeamLiquid like there's no tomorrow. Pages upon pages are written about how Terran vs Zerg or Protoss is so ridiculously overpowered that Terran can sit on their ass and suck their thumb and still get ~1000 points in Diamond. They exaggerate and whine so much, that it creates such a toxic environment that even I, as a Terran player, think I'm overpowered, even while going on a 10 game losing streak. I'm thinking, "Am I so bad that I can't even win with an overpowered race? Should I just start proxy raxxing?" And that's where it all goes wrong. When the player mentality begins as "I'm here to win, not learn" then that's when all rationale goes out the window. 
 
Sean "Day[9]" Tzu, has said that if players play to win and not learn, then you'd just end up doing the exact same strat over and over and over again, and even if you keep winning, what's the point? You're not improving. People who cheese during placements are a remarkable example of this, as they try to get to a high league so that they can brag that they're 'in plat' or 'in diamond' to their bronze league friends. However, after their 5 wins in placement, they get roflstomped so hard that all they've gotten are those 5 measly wins. Playing with a build order is fine, but play with a few. Learn to adapt to that build order, don't be so stoic and follow it supply by supply. A prime example of how to adapt is the Zerg IdrA. Although he is an advocate of BM and crys of imbalance, his macro style of play is extremely intriguing and although it becomes predictable at times, you can see how he adapts to his situation slowly. In the beta, he used to do a 14 hatch 15 pool strat where he'd fast expand really quickly and just rocket past his opponent. However now, although he still fast expands, against Terran, he almost always expects reapers and with good overlord timing, he'll throw up a Roach Warren with perfect timing. The Zerg Dimaga and Cool are also good examples of great timing and game sense. 
 
Well this was a long rant, but I hope people who read this realize that Starcraft is an extremely young game, and unlike a lot of RTSes, they will support this as if this is an MMO, and will do their best to balance this game. To whether or not actual ladder will matter in a few years, however, remains to be seen.